The Poverty of Identity Politics

We are agreed though that we don’t want to support middle class and ruling class, women, men, black, disable gay trans and so forth then what are we left with.

I actually think middle class black people shouldn't be shot in the street by police or arrested for being in their own front gardens, that middle class queer people shouldn't get stabbed after being asked to dance at parties etc. so if these are byproducts of those things not happening to working class people that seems fine?

If you think there are fixed categories of working, middle and ruling class and that the working class needs to unite against the middle and upper class, then you're using a largely sociological definition of class (class as social category) that's closer to a populist than a communist one.

A lot of people will say teachers and university lecturers are 'middle class', but there have just been significant strikes in both the UK and US by workers in those sectors. Should we not 'support' those workers because they are 'middle class'? Wouldn't that be a bit divisive?

I actually think it's fine to talk about stratification in the working class on things like skilled vs. manual labour, income, job security etc. (although I don't think it's very useful to bang on about working class vs. middle class) but to do so you'd also need to be able to discuss gender and race meaningfully instead of ignoring them and hoping they'll go away.

the 'organisers' or 'intellectuals' or whatever kind of work is valorised in whatever circle starting to be held to account for the vast amount of energy they suck out of the people around them. So many of these people are experiencing a real threat to their status and are lashing out.

I dunno some of it may be that, but tbh I've not seen armchair pointy-heads being punted out of the movement particularly, if anything they often thrive on being able to talk the right language and can at times take advantage of that to bear down on people who don't know the political equivalent of which fork to use.

Tbh I think a lot of the animosity towards "ID pol" is rather simply explainable as people wanting things to go back to "normal" running so they can get on with what they originally signed up for (ie bashing the rich). The problem with this tendency though of course is that it ends up acting in a way which benefits reactionaries, because "the norm" is pretty shit.

Okay so in part what Mike Harman said but also there’s an interesting assumption being made about where division in the working class comes from. It’s a very common error to assume that class unity exists ab initio in the class in itself instead of being something we have to work to create by becoming the class for itself.

If we can’t talk about and address:
* How a fuck of a lot of LGBT+ working class youth are homeless because their working class parents kicked them out;
* How many working class women are brutalised and abused by the working class men who claim to love them;
* How working class black folks have historically and to this day been excluded from a lot of workplace and community organising by racism coming from white working class people;
* Etc. Etc. EtFuckingCetera.
Then what we have isn’t unity but willful ignorance of pre-existing division.

Also, what is this guilt by associate bullshit people are always self-flaggelating about? Get a fucking grip. If someone disagrees with you, it doesn't mean we're calling you fascists or abusers. Bloody martyrs.

No, but you're calling the critics of IP enablers of abusers/fascists. And I'm not whining about, just noting what arguments you take recourse to (in defense of something that you claim to not even know what it is).

its extremely clear that the people whining* about "identity politics" mean attempts to deal with bigotry and oppression, ie anti racism, feminism, any thing around LGBT issues etc, and this is exactly why none of the "critics of identity politics" can define what they mean by identity politics
Link here is the closest we have got to honesty on this https://libcom.org/forums/theory/poverty-identity-politics-21052018?page...

I read somewhere a while back (can't find the article so the following might have glaring inaccuracies) about someone who managed to run an unofficial (and possibly illegal) PrEP trial in London which saved dozens of people's lives before it started to be available more widely.

Edit: Just regarding your account of it, he prevented hundreds (maybe thousands?) of new transmissions of HIV. How many of those might have died of it is speculation. I understand that people who've been diagnosed with HIV in the UK live longer than the rest of the population on average because HIV medication is so good and people living with HIV are screened more regularly for other stuff.

Noa, I said what kind of identity politics because I want to know exactly what kind of identity politics is ruining anarchism. Pretty simple really. It's clearly not the banknote feminism type, so what is it exactly? Specifically, not some vague catch-all that nobody is very clear about. I can hardly be shifting the definition if nobody has been able to define it. And it's a bit rich to talk about weasel words when you've been weaseling around not answering a straightforward question.

As for guilt by association, it comes up all the time. Point out that that identity politics has been thoroughly adopted by the right and cannot be recuperated (bit like the word libertarian) and it's all complaints of guilt by association don't call me a fascist wah wah. Point out that blanket complaints of identity politics enables abusers and people get defensive, not me, I'm not an abuser. The expression that not everything is about you, comes to mind.

My two cents? I agree with Sadie, people don't like change. People find it hard to accept that theory, praxis, society as a whole changes. Anarchism has to evolve with changes in society, or just die, it's your call. This is not 1918, if it were we would be having the conversation about whether propaganda of the deed is ruining anarchism. (Spoiler alert: it didn't really help.)

Twenty years ago (less even?) people paid lip service to anti-sexism, racism, etc etc but it didn't go much further than that. Non negotiable opinion there, I'm old enough to remember. Things are different now and anyone who isn't a straight, white, cis man expects to have a say too. Some people don't like that. Point out that something is sexist, racist, transphobic etc and there's a total knee jerk reaction. You have people telling other people that their real life concerns isn't actually a problem, people who don't have these issues themselves. I understand, people fall into habits of behaviour but it's not good enough. I'm not even saying that the bulk of the anti-identity politics crew are racist etc, it's just that they have become ossified in their opinions and aren't prepared to listen to other people. It's actually very hard to accept challenge and change. I'm kind of being charitable here. I'm an older person too and I've had to evolve my opinions in response to a wider change.I do however have some very uncharitable opinions about this but I'm not going to voice them right now...

Also, there are some extreme oddball behaviour, largely in pockets of America but as Steven said it's mostly among liberals. But these are then used as an excuse go off on one about identity politics - it's all new, intersectional, American, academic, identity politics bollocks and isn't relevant to working classes. It's a bit like saying that anarchism isn't relevant because some people who call themselves anarchists are primmos and who wants to live in a cave.

So, anybody want to have a go at this one:

What constitutes the actual variety of identity politics which is ruining anarchism? I will accept examples of real life situations in which identity politics was detrimental to anarchism, if an abstract answer is't possible.

What constitutes the actual variety of identity politics which is ruining anarchism? I will accept examples of real life situations in which identity politics was detrimental to anarchism, if an abstract answer is't possible.

So far the only concrete answer we’ve had to this is “Trans people not wanting to be around vicious transphobes”. And any movement that can be ruined by that probably deserves to be ruined tbh.

I can answer that question - identity politics is ruining anarchism coz instead of getting on with supporting comrades that are subject to real life discrimination and oppression every day based on some arbitrary notion of inferiority relating to their gender, colour, sexual preference or whatever, many ‘so called’ anarchists would rather fetishise an imaginary ideal that can never have any practical place in an anarchist ideology, as that ideology has amongst its core principles the aim of smashing inequality and prejudice and fighting back against those that instigate it.
It’s so fucking simple and leads me to only one seemingly feasible conclusion - that those who get their knickers in such a knot over it would prefer that the inequality, that favours them, remains firmly in place.

Perhaps the problem in this discussion is that the "anti-idpol" camp wants to criticize certain influences of liberalism on radical politics (including anarchism), while the "pro-idpol" (for the sake of simplicity) camp dismisses that influence – as Mike Harman put it, the Bay Area stuff is just "angry liberals" calling themselves anarchists, not real anarchists. The latter implies that when proper anarchists do "identity politics", they preserve their focus on class, steer clear of reformism etc.

I have to say I'm on the fence here. On the one hand, I fully support the independent organization of women and other sectors of the working class. I believe organizing for reforms involving the interests of these sectors (reproductive rights, freedom of movement, demilitarization of the police etc. etc.) is key to building class unity and hence class power, although as any other struggle for reforms (including strikes for pay) it has its pitfalls and can be recuperated. I also think that perhaps the most difficult struggles to be fought out are not between the class and capital or state, but within the class itself (i.e., against the interests, perceived or real, of the sexist, racist, nationalist, homophobic and transphobic sectors of the class). Communists should obviously be on the side of the oppressed sectors (i.e., women, non-whites, migrants, LGBTI), and not just (perhaps not even primarily) for moral reasons (e.g. "supporting the downtrodden") but for strategic reasons as well (divisions and oppressions inside the class weaken the class as a whole).

...but (here it comes), I'm also wary of the general "retreat from class", the turn towards reformism and professionalized activism centered around grad students and academics (I'm one myself), undue focus on language and discourse (including its strict policing in activist circles and the development of an expert terminology, especially around gender), the uncritical acceptance of "non-Western", "alternative" traditions (such as Islam), the focus on the individual ("check your privilege") and the substitution of "intersectionality" as an empty slogan ("a catalog of oppressions", including "classism" or, even worse, "social inequality") for "intersectionality" as a means of analysing class formation and of looking at how the various power relations in fact support and determine one another.

I can't pin this on any particular anarchist organization. It's more like a "zeitgeist". I've seen quite a few activisty friends end up in single-issue NGOs or doing consulting work as experts for the state. In discussions, I can also see the tiptoeing around incredibly oppressive non-Western traditions, or the heated arguments resulting from someone not using (albeit in good faith) the proper pronoun. So I do think that the liberal version of identity politics does have an influence in radical circles, and it's not a good one.

Jura, you make fair points but really you’re talking about liberalism creeping into anarchist circles, and though this may well be the case it’s a long way from what others are suggesting which if I analogise it is on about the same level as ‘all drummers are wankers coz Phil Collins’.

I read somewhere a while back (can't find the article so the following might have glaring inaccuracies) about someone who managed to run an unofficial (and possibly illegal) PrEP trial in London which saved dozens of people's lives before it started to be available more widely.

Edit: Just regarding your account of it, he prevented hundreds (maybe thousands?) of new transmissions of HIV. How many of those might have died of it is speculation. I understand that people who've been diagnosed with HIV in the UK live longer than the rest of the population on average because HIV medication is so good and people living with HIV are screened more regularly for other stuff.

Total derail, just thought you might find it interesting.

Thank you that's the one!

edit - crossposted with the edit

So I'm not sure that's a derail. If we look at recent accounts of "what's wrong with the left" such as Kill All Normies, Nagle doesn't talk about people being HIV positive, but she does talk about 'spoonies' and more generally the tendency of people to talk on social media about invisible, hard to diagnose illnesses.

Angela Nagle wrote:

Professor Adolph Reed Jr. has often said liberals don’t believe in actual politics any more, just ‘bearing witness to suffering’. The cult of suffering, weakness and vulnerability has become central to contemporary liberal identity politics, as it is enacted in spaces like Tumblr.
[...]
Some of the disabilities they describe can often be either psychological in origin or are unrecognized by modern medicine. One example of this is found in the ‘spoonies’ identity – an identification and online subculture in which members, typically young women, get spoon jewelry, spoon tattoos and put ‘spoonie’ in their social media biographies to signal their belonging.

HIV is invisible, and anyone with it prior to 1981 would have gone undiagnosed because it wasn't even recognised. There's still stigma attached to it, and at the time Greg Owen was working on this, it wasn't served well preventatively by the NHS.

From that Buzzfeed article, Greg Owen disclosed that he'd become HIV positive online (is this a "cult of suffering, weakness and vulnerability"? If not why is it different to talking about chronic pain online?) was a catalyst in a bunch of sexual health clinics, a few doctors, and Owen himself taking some (mild but effective) direct action to bypass the NHS commissioning process. Seems like the opposite of a 'cult of suffering, vulnerability and weakness' to me but presumably people shouldn't discuss illness online because it's too weird.

Jura, I agree with you that there's a problem of 'retreat from the class' but isn't the best thing to do just .... push for class politics? Promote and support workplace organising and strikes, housing struggles, anti police violence? The 'retreat from the class' is because of class defeats and changes in how society is organised isn't it? Not because of idpol?

[edit] promote these things and do all the essential things we have to do that may be 'anti oppression' or whatever and do them together. Be thoughtful about people's specific needs so abortion support networks bear in mind how to help women who don't have papers and can't travel, in strikes bear in mind how to support people on work visas. In all our activity bear in mind about poverty, homelessness, different educational background, work in an inclusive way, class politics done right shouldn't be in competition with 'anti oppression' politics as the working class is multicultural, gay,

...........fucking hell how many times have I written this, why do I even do this

What constitutes the actual variety of identity politics which is ruining anarchism? I will accept examples of real life situations in which identity politics was detrimental to anarchism, if an abstract answer is't possible.

Leaving aside the question whether it is "ruining" anarchism or not, you yourself recognise something, which we for convenience's sake call IP, entered into anarchism over the past decade or so. Fall Back recongnised this influence too:

Fall Back wrote:

the locals that did best were the ones that took intersectionality etc into account.

Here again is you Fleur talking about something new that entered into anarchism:

Fleur wrote:

people don't like change. People find it hard to accept that theory, praxis, society as a whole changes. Anarchism has to evolve with changes in society, or just die, it's your call.
...
Twenty years ago (less even?) people paid lip service to anti-sexism, racism, etc etc but it didn't go much further than that. [...] Things are different now and anyone who isn't a straight, white, cis man expects to have a say too. Some people don't like that. [...] You have people telling other people that their real life concerns isn't actually a problem, people who don't have these issues themselves. I understand, people fall into habits of behaviour but it's not good enough. I'm not even saying that the bulk of the anti-identity politics crew are racist etc, it's just that they have become ossified in their opinions and aren't prepared to listen to other people. It's actually very hard to accept challenge and change. I'm kind of being charitable here. I'm an older person too and I've had to evolve my opinions in response to a wider change.

So again, you're admitting that something new entered anarchism, and the old anarchism has to change to it. In your opinion that would be for the good.

So how do you define that something new? The point that you seem to stress is that now anarchists have learned to "listen to other people". Whereas in the past they just paid "lip service to anti-sexism, racism, etc". Do you care to elaborate?

Yeah,something new has entered anarchism, a lower tolerance for putting up with sexist, racist, transphobic etc bullshit in the name of class politics. If that's what people think is identity politics then I'm not sure that those people have a lot to offer anyway.

Jura, I agree with you that there's a problem of 'retreat from the class' but isn't the best thing to do just .... push for class politics? Promote and support workplace organising and strikes, housing struggles, anti police violence? The 'retreat from the class' is because of class defeats and changes in how society is organised isn't it? Not because of idpol?

I agree. But the liberal and reformist varieties of organizing (which, as you say, is originally the manifestation, not the cause of the defeat) also serve as a convenient avenue for those people who simply want to "do something". Sometimes they even provide a veneer of "radicalism" for such efforts. So people, smart and hard-working people, who could otherwise be doing more explicitly anti-statist and anti-capitalist stuff end up as radical academics or spokespersons for the "the black community" or whatever. That way, the defeat perpetuates itself by recuperating genuine concerns and desires and channeling them towards reformism and isolation from wider class issues. (BTW, I guess one that in the postwar period, trade unions played the same role in this respect that NGOs etc. play today.) And I think this is what makes the critics of idpol angry, although it's obviously not a reason to dismiss independent organizing and the other stuff I mentioned in my previous post. It seems to me, though, that it does make pushing for class politics harder.

But I don't even think that the stuff you mention is all that new. It should be taken as a matter of course, as more or less prominent parts of the workers' movement were always doing that. Only it wasn't called "identity politics", either by the proponents or by the critics.

Yes, a lot of folks do that. In fact this a large part of the problem because "identity politics" seems to at various points encompass basically all political disagreements that go much beyond "we all hate the rich though yeah?" How about rather than clinging onto the term for the sake of convenience you use a bit more precision.

Are you moaning about students' leanings towards essentialism? Middle-class faddism? Academic elitism and obsfucation? Liberal one-upmanship? The descent of small/homogenous groups into weird self-reinforcing ideological blind alleys? All of these can be problems when appended to questions of race, gender and sexuality but are not the same thing as addressing them as living issues in the working class.

The most successful class organising I do is when we put loads of effort into being really holistic. So I'm in a group that is organising with people who are often very poor and going through a lot of shit and we do masses of work making sure that there's childcare, translators, food available. And this group has grown and grown and is really successful with new people coming to every meeting.
So I don't think there's a conflict. Someone mentioned high rates of homelessness among young gay people, which as someone who used to volunteer on a homeless advice line I would say is definitely a serious issue. So we need to make sure we are aware about homeless issues if we organise around gay issues, and aware about gay issues if we organise around homeless issues, not, like probably happens, these young people get ignored because it's difficult, and people make lazy assumptions.

For the purpose of clarity, I don't think that identity politics is a particularly useful term. I think it's pretty crappy actually. But it is identity politics which some people blame for whatever woes anarchism has, so I would like to know what they mean by it. I wouldn't describe being trans inclusive as identity politics. I'd describe it as not being a dick.

If you guys can't actually spell out what it is that is making you so pissed off then you are leaving your position open for other people to interpret. You're not doing yourselves any favours with that.

class politics done right shouldn't be in competition with 'anti oppression' politics as the working class is multicultural, gay,

BTW, I think I disagree here to some extent. I think that sooner or later, class struggle oriented organizing among migrants, non-whites, women etc. has to confront other varieties of organizing in these sectors, spontaneous or formal, around the same concerns. For example, migrants may form useful networks based on their traditions, religion or national identities. These networks can be helpful, they can provide protection from oppression, self-help or even organize offensive struggles, but they also often involve horrible patriarchal hierarchies or nationalism (and hence stifle class unity etc.). They can sometimes be transformed into something else, but it does involve some effort, or even internal struggle. Similarly with race or gender: facts such as that there simply is no "black community", that Theresa May's interests differ from the interests of the cashier or the nurse, have to be confronted sooner or later by any successful effort at class based intersectional organizing. So I think there we do actually compete with "anti-oppression organizing" in the form of, e.g., the more reformist/pro-Democratic Party wing of BLM (and I think the bougies realize this!).

But I don't even think that the stuff you mention is all that new. It should be taken as a matter of course, as more or less prominent parts of the workers' movement were always doing that. Only it wasn't called "identity politics", either by the proponents or by the critics.

I definitely don't think it's new, the best parts of the worker's movement always took on these issues. But it was never a matter of course as far as I know. I'm from a movement family, and these issues were always coming up and were always bitterly argued about. They weren't called identity politics as far as I remember, but women were always furious about sexism and the men were always furious about the women being furious about sexism.

Yeah,something new has entered anarchism, a lower tolerance for putting up with sexist, racist, transphobic etc bullshit in the name of class politics. If that's what people think is identity politics then I'm not sure that those people have a lot to offer anyway.

So your answer is that the new theory/praxis is "a lower tolerance for putting up with sexist, racist, transphobic etc bullshit in the name of class politics."

So how is this "new idea" that entered anarchism "detrimental" to "anarchism"? You claim that this new theory/praxis was not present in the old anarchism.

Fleur wrote:

Anarchism has to evolve with changes in society, or just die, it's your call.

So this new idea/praxis will change the "old anarchism" into a "new anarchism". One could say this change is "detrimental" to the "old anarchism". But then the "old anarchism" hasn't "a lot to offer anyway", so it's for the better if it just dies out.

But for the "new anarchism" I suspect the "new ideas" haven't been detrimental, no.

class politics done right shouldn't be in competition with 'anti oppression' politics as the working class is multicultural, gay,

BTW, I think I disagree here to some extent. I think that sooner or later, class struggle oriented organizing among migrants, non-whites, women etc. has to confront other varieties of organizing in these sectors, spontaneous or formal, around the same concerns. For example, migrants may form useful networks based on their traditions, religion or national identities. These networks can be helpful, they can provide protection from oppression, self-help or even organize offensive struggles, but they also often involve horrible patriarchal hierarchies or nationalism (and hence stifle class unity etc.). They can sometimes be transformed into something else, but it does involve some effort, or even internal struggle. Similarly with race or gender: facts such as that there simply is no "black community", that Theresa May's interests differ from the interests of the cashier or the nurse, have to be confronted sooner or later by any successful effort at class based intersectional organizing. So I think there we do actually compete with "anti-oppression organizing" in the form of, e.g., the more reformist/pro-Democratic Party wing of BLM (and I think the bougies realize this!).

As Fleur pointed out, it is worth noting that none of these anti-identity politics warriors (including Noa) have pointed out what exactly this "identity politics" is which is ruining anarchism, or given any practical examples.

Honestly I think that’s a feature rather than a bug for some people. While identity politics is a very real thing (and limited in some fundamental ways that should be criticised, as I said upthread), the way it’s used by some people is as a sneer. It’s a way to dismiss the words and/or actions of marginalised workers when they make the speaker uncomfortable.

This isn't just an online phenomenon. I've been sat in a room with Serge and watched him jump through every hoop to avoid actually defining what he meant. At best, after over an hour of discussion about the difference between liberal and anarchist use of terms and a break-out group to try and find points of disagreement, all he could say is that he rejected any notion of intersectuonality as a holistic whole but wouldn't explain what that meant and when asked to finally be clear admitted the didn't have anything to say. I'm expecting an accusation of sounding like a trot will be forthcoming for saying this, but I doubt we will ever get anything more than vaguatity or pointing at liberal goals and pretending they are something anarchists are working towards. All these vague threads and comments on LibCom and elsewhere don't amount to any real analysis or engagement of anarchist communist ideas and practice. To be honest it is just disappointing.

The way in which TERF ideology has spread from being the preserve of a few semi-organised reactionaries in London and a few scattered about here and there to the current state of being where they are making serious attempts towards inroads into daily life is a textbook example of the enforcement of ruling class ideals onto the working classes. We ate taking about a small number of academic elites, folks with media sway, and those hosting organising tools all using their place to shit on trans people because too many of us are radical at this time and they need us put in our place so that liberal voices can be installed to stop any possible struggles that could take place and threaten the current balance of reproductive labour. Now is the time we need help and when solidarity will go a long way. This kind of thing gets talked about in libertarian/anarchist communist texts as a time for our principles to come to the fore, however a bunch of anarchists/communists/leftists seem to all be joining in with the dogpile rather than taking heed and helping fight back. I'd expected it from some, but I have to repeat that from others it has just been a real disappointment.

How about rather than clinging onto the term for the sake of convenience you use a bit more precision.

We use "class struggle" for convenience's sake, although the word "class" is just a classification/category/type of something. Like a class B model of a car, or class X of chemical, etc.. Or third grade class in a school (whence the room is called class-room). One can just as well speak about the "category struggle" or the "type struggle".

jura, makes some sensible clarifications in their last two posts - I would add that the many different 'identities' we assume or are landed with not only 'intersect' but often 'conflict' and can become a barrier to the evolution of a class solidarity unless we can move beyond those identities as our primary focus and integrate them within a practical movement of opposition to the capitalist material conditions that maintain such divisions - no easy matter.

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